Doctor Nicholas Ng

Doctor Nicholas Ng

Casual Academic - PERF2028,
Dean's Unit, School of Humanities & Comm Arts

Biography

Dr Nicholas Ng is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Australia-China Institute for Arts and Culture (Western Sydney University). Trained as an ethnomusicologist and composer, his research interests include various genres of music from China: sacred, secular, popular (jazz), theatrical, and Chinese music in diaspora, particularly Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Nicholas is particularly committed to the practice-led research of Chinese music and the awareness of Chinese culture in Australia. He established the ANU (Australian National University) Classical Music Ensemble (2003) and completed a PhD on the music of Sydney’s Chinese community at the ANU (2008). He later edited ENCOUNTERS: Musical meetings between Australia and China, a book based on the 2010 Australia-China festival that he curated while on staff at Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. In 2015, he was engaged by Arts Queensland and Brisbane Multicultural Arts Centre (BeMAC) to bring traditional Chinese music and story-telling into remote areas of Queensland. Nicholas continues to give artistic advice for Sydney Conservatorium's very first 35-piece Chinese Music Ensemble.

Artistically, Nicholas explores new ways of connecting with nature, the ancient past, and the spiritual world through traditional and contemporary sound. He has performed at Sydney Festival, Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels) and has toured to Australia, New Zealand, North America, Canada and Europe. In 2017, he appeared in Gareth Farr’sThe Bone Feeder (New Zealand Opera). His life as an artist has been documented on SBS Mandarin Radio, ABC Music Show, and in the ABC Compass program, Divine Rhythms (2018).

Published by Orpheus Music, Nicholas has composed for The Song Company, The Australian Voices, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Chronology Arts, Art Gallery of NSW and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. Much of Nicholas’ output has focused on electro-acoustic writing for film, theatre and dance. His folio includes the theme music for the Sydney Asia-Pacific Film Festival (2002), QL2 Dance Inc compositions, and sound design for Emma’s Dynasty (Jigsaw Theatre) and China (Performing Lines) by William Yang. 

Nicholas has produced Asian-influenced tracks for Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (CAAP) projects Stories East and West (2010), Stories Then and Now (2013), Who Speaks for Me? (2016) and The Serpent’s Table (2014). He is the musical director and a performer in Slow Boat (Playmoves), a physical theatre piece shortlisted for the QLD Premier’s Drama Award, Queensland Theatre (2018).

Passionate about Asian ensemble music, Nicholas co-established the ANU Chinese Music Ensemble (2003) and curated the festival ENCOUNTERS: China (2010), which inspired his first edited book Encounters: Musical Meetings between Australia and China (2013). Nicholas continues to give artistic advice for Sydney Conservatorium's very first 35-piece Chinese Music Ensemble.

This information has been contributed by Doctor Ng.

Qualifications

  • PhD The Australian National University

Interests

  • Chinese sacred music
  • Chinese classical music
  • Chinese folk music
  • Composition
  • Ethnomusicology

Organisational Unit (School / Division)

  • Dean's Unit, School of Humanities & Comm Arts

Contact

Email: N/A
Phone: (02) 9685 9941
Mobile:
Location: EA.G.02
Parramatta

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Teaching

Previous Teaching Areas

  • 102563 Screen Media Composition, 2019

Publications

Books

  • Ng, N. (2012), 'Encounters: Musical Meetings between Australia and China', : Australian Academic Press 9781922117069.

Chapters in Books

  • Ingram, C., Liu, L. and Ng, N. (2021), 'Falling leaves and new roots : informed practice within the Sydney Conservatorium of Music's Chinese Music Ensemble', Creative Research in Music: Informed Practice, Innovation and Transcendence, Routledge 9780367231323.
  • Ng, N. (2012), '"Sounds Chinese" : musical meetings with "China" in contemporary Australia', Encounters: Musical Meetings between Australia and China, Australian Academic Press 9781922117069.
  • Ng, N. (2012), 'Musical meetings', Encounters: Musical Meetings between Australia and China, Australian Academic Press 9781922117069.
  • Ng, N. (2009), 'Domesticating the foreign : singing salvation through translation in the Australian Catholic Chinese community', Sounds in Translation: Intersections of Music, Technology and Society, ANU E Press 9781921536540.

Journal Articles

  • Michail, S., Grace, R., Ng, C., Ng, J. and Shier, H. (2023), '[In Press] Cultivating child and youth decision-making : the principles and practices of the ReSPECT approach to professional development', Children & Society, .
  • Ng, N. (2021), 'Engaging with a genre in decline : Teochew Opera in Western Sydney', Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, vol 22, no 2-3 , pp 162 - 183.
  • Ng, N. (2013), 'Cultural sustainability and loss in Sydney's Chinese community', Humanities Research, vol 19, no 3 , pp 111 - 124.
  • Ng, N. (2011), 'Foreign places, hybrid spaces', Continuum, vol 25, no 4 , pp 529 - 546.
  • Ng, N. (2011), 'I love the starry sky at night-time : singing and signing in the Buddha's Light International Association, Sydney', Musike, vol 3, no 5-6 , pp 19 - 54.
  • Ng, N. (2011), 'Chinese Shadows : The Amazing World of Shadow Puppetry in Rural Northwest China', Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, vol 12, no 5 , pp 503 - 506.

Conference Papers

  • Ng, N. (2022), 'A minority, yet not a minority : playing the erhu in multicultural Australia', International Council for Traditional Music. Conference, Lisbon, Portugal.
  • Ng, N. (2019), 'A genre in decline? : Teo Chew opera in Western Sydney', Australian Anthropological Society. Conference, Canberra, A.C.T..
  • Ng, N., Ingram, C. and Liu, L. (2016), 'Falling leaves and new roots : an exploration of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music's Chinese Music Ensemble', Musicological Society of Australia. National Conference, Adelaide, S.A..
  • Cunio, K. and Ng, N. (2011), 'The musicologist as composer / producer : the intersections of traditional music, creative practice and technology', Sustainability and Ethnomusicology, Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University.

Nicholas began his ethnographic fieldwork within Australian Chinese temple and church communities in 2004. He eventually broadened his scope to include secular cross-over sub-communities such as lion dancing, opera and instrumental music associations. Between 2008 and 2010, while touring in a theatre show, he engaged in additional fieldwork in the Chinese communities of England and French and English-speaking Canada.

His research method is broadly ethnographic with an investigative approach primarily informed by qualitative anthropological research strategies prevalent in the discipline of ethnomusicology. This involves a combination of archival research (National Library of Australia, National Film and Sound Archives and other libraries), qualitative observation in the field, structured and informal interviews, recordings of performances, and analysis of extant literature and data gathered.

  • 2020—pending. ‘An exploration of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Chinese Music Ensemble’. In Anna Reid and Neal Costa de Peres (eds.) Creative Research in Music: Informed Practice, Innovation and Transcendence. Routledge.

  • 2016. ‘An exploration of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Chinese Music Ensemble’. Presented at Shifts and Turns: Moving Music, Musicians and Ideas. The University of Adelaide: Musicological Society of Australia 39th National Conference.   

  • 2013. ‘Cultural Sustainability and Loss in Sydney’s Chinese’. In Stephen Wild, Di Roy, Aaron Corn and Ruth Lee Martin (eds.) Humanities Research 12 (3): 111-124.

  • 2013. Encounters: Musical meetings between Australia and China. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.

  • 2011. ‘Foreign spaces, hybrid places’. In Olivia Khoo (ed.) Contiuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 25(4): 529-546. 

  • 2011. ‘I love the starry-sky at night-time: singing and signing in the Buddha’s Light International Association, Sydney’. In Ian Russell and Frances Wilkins (eds.) Musiké: Sacred Singing and Musical Spirituality 5/6: 19-54. Rome-The Hague: Semar.

  • 2009. ‘Domesticating the foreign: singing salvation through translation in the Australian Catholic Chinese community’. In Amy CHAN and Alistair Nelson (eds.) Sounds in Translation: 111-144. Canberra: ANU E Press.

  • c2006. Bathing the Buddha: for recorder quintet [music]. Armidale, NSW: Orpheus Music. National Library of Australia. National Library of Australia (NLA).

  • c2003. Zhuang Biao – mounting a hanging scroll [videorecording] / Sun Yu. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales.

  • c2002. Towards a glad tomorrow [sound recording] / Brendan Joyce. Australian Music Centre: Sydney.

This information has been contributed by Doctor Ng.

Media

Title: Desert Water (2018)
Description: An original composition performed by Nicholas Ng and Lulu Liu
Title: Divine Rhythms
Description: A documentary featuring Nicholas Ng and two other artists
Title: Qifeng ge (2017)
Description: An original composition for Sydney Conservatorium of Music Chinese Music Ensmeble and Judgment of Paris Recorder Ensemble, conducted by Warwick Tyrrell
Title: The music of China
Description: An introduction to Chinese music
Title: Yu?? ??r m??ng (2013)
Description: An original arrangement of a northeastern Chinese lullaby for The Australian Voices, peformed in English and Mandarin

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